Hans Christian Andersen and his Characters’ Inherent Passivity

Hans Christian Andersen, also known as HCA, constantly discussed the theme of “inherent rejection” in his stories. The Steadfast Tin Soldier reflects this theme perfectly, as does The Little Mermaid. Both of the title characters yearn for someone from a distance, but they cannot act before tragedy separates them from true love. This paper examines how the protagonists’ inaction, due to fear of inadequacy, leads to their tragedies.

Hans Christian Andersen (HCA) was a closeted queer man who believed that those he loved would never accept him. Other writers such as Cynthia Barounis have discussed this interpretation in her essay “Special Affects: Mermaids, Prosthetics, and the Disabling of Feminine Futurity,” published in Women’s Studies Quarterly. You can see this theme reflected in both his happy and tragic stories, the need to find love with inherent rejection. In the stories The Steadfast Tin Soldier and The Little Mermaid, the main characters’ belief that they are not worthy of love ultimately leads to their tragic ends. Their refusal to act for their personal gain allows others to control their narrative. In making these adaptations, they become more active. Only then can the characters achieve the happiness they deeply desire. They have to stand up to destiny and change their fates wholeheartedly.

The tin soldier believes he is not worthy of the ballerina and so never approaches her. He lies on the table where he has a view of her dancing. As he says after laying his eyes on her:

“That is the wife for me,” he thought; “but she is too grand, and lives in a castle, while I have only a box to live in, five-and-twenty of us altogether, that is no place for her. Still I must try and make her acquaintance.” (Andersen, 8/26/23)

Immediately, the soldier considers his home as a reason not to take a wife. His battalion has a box, while she has a castle. Any paltry wealth he has cannot support her dancing or provide a suitable living space. Even though the soldier has not even talked to the ballerina or visited her in her castle, he resigns himself to lying on the table and watching her. Because of this fear, life interferes before he can seize his second chance.

The ballerina similarly remains a passive character, and that dooms her papery figure. During the story, she stays in her spot on the stage even when the other toys come to life for midnight adventures. “Only the tin soldier and the dancer remained in their places. She stood on tiptoe, with her legs stretched out, as firmly as he did on his one leg” (8/26/23).

She catches his eye, and he stares at her all through the night. The ballerina does not indicate if she returns his feelings, or if she has even registered his presence. Twenty-four other soldiers have entered the room as well, along with wonderful other toys for the owner. Neither of the central protagonists move towards each other, even though the other toys are up and about, dancing and playing. They have a choice to act, but neither does. She is paper, and he is tin, but they both remain as still as stone.

Because of this initial hesitation, the tin soldier foregoes his only chance for love. The next day, a freak accident tosses him out the boy’s window after some visiting friends place the soldier on the sill. No one can explain it, “but the window flew open, and out fell the tin soldier, heels over head, from the third story, into the street beneath” (8/26/23). The fact that it is only the tin soldier who flies out highlights the randomness. None of the other soldiers nor the paper castle, which would catch the wind owing to its flimsiness, also fly. The soldier could cry out for help while he is trapped in the street outside, but he feels it is unbecoming of him.

Notably, the story has no clear antagonist. Unlike in other fairy tales that HCA has written, like The Snow Queen, The Elf of the Rose, or The Wild Swans, we do not see an instance of a villain that weaves the narrative together. Instead, the tin soldier’s doubt holds him back from acting. While the narrator suspects there is a goblin that occupies a toy box, the goblin never directly acts in the story. It merely warns the tin soldier “don’t wish for what doesn’t belong to you” (8/26/23). Those words could be a warning, or they could be advice: not to seek if he does not know the party’s feelings. Perhaps the goblin’s sentiment is practical: wishing for romance, when they are all fragile toys, could foretell disaster. While the narrator interprets that the goblin was jealous, and contrived bad luck so that the soldier would end up in the streets, and later in the fire, the prose itself does not confirm these sentiments one way or the other. All the goblin does is disappear and reappear in his box. He does not physically toss the soldier into the fire the way a random playmate of the toy’s owner does.

The humans in question also show little to no malice within the story. None of them are antagonists. In fact, some humans show love for the objects within the room. Others that demonstrate moments of cruelty seem not to know better. When we meet the boy who owns the toys, he “clapped his hands with delight” after unwrapping the box of soldiers (8/26/23). After the soldier falls out the window, the boy and his serving maid go outside and start searching for him. They have to quit the search because boys on the street are playing with the soldier. When they send the soldier on a paper boat, they are merely having fun. The cook later cheers and “exclaims” when she finds the soldier inside a fish that she purchased, and returns him to the nursery. Indeed, everyone in the room “were all eager to see this wonderful soldier who had travelled about inside a fish” (8/26/23). They want to view this miracle, and to return to the delicate art of playtime.

When reading the climax, the reader can surmise that the deaths of the soldier and the ballerina were genuine accidents. A child tosses the soldier into the room’s stove, but “had no reason for doing so,” and the narrator concludes that the goblin in the puzzle box was to blame (8/26/23). We see no evidence for the former or the latter, however, and thus blaming the goblin sheds suspicion on the trustworthiness of the prose. Sometimes children are careless with toys, and they cannot understand the value of them. The ballerina being made of paper in this version makes her more fragile. Only one spark would set her alight.

Some animated adaptations would give the tin soldier and the dancer agency so they can fight for their happiness. Disney, when they adapted this story for Fantasia 2000, chose one of Shostakovich’s pieces to accompany the animation. The producers selected Piano Concerto 2, which ends on an uplifting note in F major. As a result, rather than go for the original downer ending, the animators went for a tale where the tin soldier gets his happy ending with the dancer. To do so, they had to make sure that the characters worked hard to avoid being tossed into the fire. They also showed the human characters make gestures of kindness, particularly the boy who owns the soldier, to avoid the bad luck that plagued the original protagonists.

In the animated Fantasia 2000 version, the soldier and ballerina move towards each other which allows for their joyous reunion. The tin soldier approaches the dancer, believing that she has one leg, and offers her a plastic flower. Despite learning otherwise, when she lowers both legs, the tin soldier lightens up when the ballerina accepts his flower and twirls for him. They demonstrate robust chemistry when playing with each other on her reflective stage. She knows how to dance, and he knows how to move around her. As a result, they are a perfect pair.

During the entire short, the tin soldier remains an active protagonist. Despite his single leg providing mobility problems, he remains a soldier, and a compassionate figure. He responds to other figures in distress, like the ballerina, and seeks an emotional connection with her. A jester inside a jack-in-the-box also takes an interest in the ballerina, and attacks the soldier to court her. Each time the jester attacks, the soldier retaliates. During one scene, he even uses his toy rifle to toss back a ball that the jester knocks at him. It foreshadows how he uses the jester’s own weight to toss him into the fire during the short’s climax. The tin soldier takes action every time the jester goes on the offensive, and he learns from his mistakes. Rather than stand in front of an open window, or too close to a fireplace, he shifts his position to save himself. He has a reason to engage in these motions.

The ballerina, in particular, is more active in this version. She takes the soldier’s flower, tucking the stem into her skirt, and shows her appreciation despite the plastic petals and lack of scent. When the jester in the jack-in-the-box attacks them, she throws a tiny ball as a missile to distract him. The ball hits its target, helping the soldier recover from the ambush. The jester has to trap her in a glass cup to focus on the soldier, as otherwise she would continue to rail against the larger toy. For the rest of the short, she refuses to associate with the jester, and focuses on the soldier when good fortune returns to him. She keeps wearing the soldier’s flower.

Having agency allows the ballerina to live. We see this free will reflected in her dancing, as she initially performs for herself. She rejects the jester and pulls away from him when he cannot accept her righteous anger. As a result, when he takes on the soldier in the climax, she dodges and watches the fight. She is not in range when the jester tosses himself and the soldier closer to the fire.

By making both protagonists more active, the Fantasia 2000 short rejects the idea that protagonists need to remain passive in the face of love. In fact, it argues the opposite; that fighting for someone and risking your heart by showing affection can fill you with more joy than being alone.

When the story starts, seeing the ocean’s surface is an object of luxury for the six mermaid princesses. They can only go to the surface when turning fifteen. The narrator describes this longing best. “None of them longed so much for her turn to come as the youngest, she who had the longest time to wait, and who was so quiet and thoughtful” (Andersen 8/26/23).

The youngest mermaid has to sit and wait her turn passively, because of tradition. All she can do is listen to her sisters’ stories, and hope that the wonders have not passed her by.

Her family sets her up to fail, and to accept her fate passively. She has to wait until she is fifteen to see the marvelous human world that her sisters have discussed every year and lack the tears to cry. When the little mermaid prepares to ascend to the surface, her grandmother orders eight oysters to attach themselves to her shell. When she exclaims that they hurt, her grandmother replies, “Pride must suffer pain” (8/26/23). The princess falls silent, wishing she had used flowers from her garden instead, and prepares for her birthday trek. Even though the family lacked this intention and would lose her forever, they nurtured a sense of longing and reinforced the need to sit with pain. She had to wait so long to see those wonders, and would do anything to get a soul and to access the world of humans.

The mermaid initially wants to become human to gain a soul and explore beyond her existing limits. Humans have fireworks, a soul, and the ability to live on after death. Her grandmother describes a soul thusly:

Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars . . . to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see. (8/26/23)

The mermaid longs for this world beyond the stars, knowing that she can never get it. If she could, however, then she could fly the same way that her sisters swim through the currents.

The prince, initially, is just a means to an end; though she loves the prince that she rescues from drowning, what the mermaid truly wants is the experience of being human. That experience can grant her a soul, and freedom. Her grandmother tells her that if a man marries her with a priest officiating the ceremony, then she will get what she wants:

If all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you, and the priest placed his right hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here and hereafter, then his soul would glide into your body and you would obtain a share in the future happiness of mankind. (8/26/23)

The mermaid becomes more enamored with the idea of love than with the reality. She wants to share a soul and to understand unattainable immortality, but she does not understand the concept of true love, and what it may mean for her. So she trades away her tongue and tail-fin to the sorceress, who lives in a house of bones within an underwater forest.

Because her grandmother warned her about how pride must suffer pain, the mermaid accepts the consequences of her choice. The sea witch warns her about the price of this magical draught. “You will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw (8/26/23)”.

The mermaid agrees to this bargain and submits to this fate. On land, she dances when people ask, and cannot shed tears even in this changed guise. She goes from an active protagonist to a passive one, serving as the prince’s platonic companion when he finds her.

Out of a twisted idea of what love is, the mermaid does whatever the prince asks. She dances and rides with him while they both ignore her bleeding feet. He claims to understand her, but does not see the infatuation in her eyes. Despite the time they spend together, she cannot find the means to tell him that she saved him, and what she gave up to win his heart. When he confesses that he has fallen for a temple maiden that ostensibly rescued him from drowning, the changed mermaid gives up. “I will take care of him, and love him, and give up my life for his sake” (8/26/23). These words prove to be a poor choice, as the temple maiden is revealed to be a princess betrothed to the prince. They marry, with the prince telling his companion, “You will rejoice in my happiness,” and the mermaid can only hide her pain (8/26/23).

One last action allows the mermaid to save herself and gain a soul. As she waits for her body to turn to sea-foam, her sisters give her a choice: stab the prince with a knife to become a mermaid again, or allow the dawn to take her. The mermaid considers using the knife while the prince and his bride are sleeping, but cannot do it when she sees that he truly loves her. Taking the knife, “she flung it far away from her into the waves” and dives into the ocean as the dawn arrives with pomp (8/26/23). Because of this little action, she becomes a Daughter of the Air, a being that can get an immortal soul with good deeds. Her suffering is rewarded, as the other Daughters tell her, and she does not need a human’s love to receive what she wants. She instead can perform good deeds and monitor the behavior of children. To get what she wants, she should emulate the behavior of children.

Much as with other Disney adaptations, the 1987 film of The Little Mermaid sought to make Ariel and her prince even more active. While the first act follows the original fairy tale pretty closely, Ariel’s desire to become human is rooted in wanting freedom from her oppressive father. King Triton would rather have Ariel perform in his concert hall than explore the surface, where humans could endanger her. She begs him to reconsider, but he refuses since he is the king. As he tells her during an argument, “As long as you live under my ocean, you’ll obey my rules (1989, The Little Mermaid [Movie], 0:13:18)!” Ariel muses, in the security of her grotto, that perhaps humans understand her inherent desires better, with their ability to walk, dance, and stroll. Seeing Eric clinches the deal that he represents freedom for her, and when she transforms, he shows her the human world. They dance, buy souvenirs, and explore the countryside.

Eric also wants such freedom, feeling that royal life chafes him. He spends his birthday exploring the oceans rather than ruling his kingdom or settling down with a princess. As his guardian Grimsby tells him to reconsider, he says that he wants to find the “right” girl, not just any girl, and someone special. He wants more than a mere princess. He wants someone who makes him feel alive. Despite having an unattainable desire to find the girl who rescued him, he gains the courage to let the “fantasy” go when meeting Ariel in human form. By letting go of that desire, she ends up right before his eyes, just as he is about to marry the wrong woman while under a spell.

Both Ariel and Eric become more active when facing their inner flaws, and an outer antagonist. Ariel’s impulsivity and desperate nature make her a pawn for the sea witch Ursula’s schemes, while Eric’s steadfast determination to find that “perfect” girl makes him oblivious to the mute princess in front of him. They have to learn to accept each other as they are in order to find happiness. Eric’s determination to make things right, and stop the sea witch, earns Triton’s approval, and he grants his blessing for their wedding.